Appreciating The Perks Of A Modern Society

by James on September 1, 2010

A couple of months ago, while idly flicking through the TV channels, I ended up watching a BBC program that looked at how they build jumbo jets, specifically the engines that Rolls Royce design. The levels of engineering and precision were understandably impressive, way more intricate and advanced than I’d ever contemplated. However, what I’d never expected (excuse my ignorance if this seems obvious to you) was how this high-tech wizardry extended to their vast help-desk setup. It isn’t just some guy on the end of the phone going through a set of pre-defined questions and answers on the screen. This base of operations in Derby actively tracks the numerous readings of over 3000 of its engines in flight, and can report discrepancies and potential issues direct to airports and maintenance teams around the world. This real-time tracking and maintenance system is now the most profitable part of Rolls Royce.

Why did this impress me? Besides being previously oblivious to this sort of airline service, it got me wondering how many years of development and innovation it took to create such a setup. It’s not just about building a help centre, it’s about creating all the sensors into the designs of each engine, creating an IT system that can track all that information and training expert staff to manage all the data.

You don’t build all that overnight. Rolls Royce, and other companies like it, could never build such a setup from scratch, or indeed build much at all without a stable society. It obviously takes years and years of work and innovation, building upon each layer of foundations.

I think we increasingly take all this for granted, and I’m not just talking about airplane technology here. Because much of it is behind the scenes, it’s easy to forget or simply not be aware of the incredible infrastructure in place across the country that allows us to have constantly running, clean water for baths and washing, and always-on electricity that keeps our homes warm and well lit whatever the time of year. And how about the nationwide service that allows us to have an ambulance at our home in minutes, and the vast transport network of trains and cars and buses that gets us quickly around the country? Or, at the top of the peak, the politically stable, economically sound (recession notwithstanding) society that creates the right environment for such long-term development?

We are still in the minority of people on this planet that actually have our basic needs covered, never mind all the other facilities on top of that. When you consider that internet access is increasingly regarded as a basic utility in the same way water is, that says a lot. But then how many years did it take to build all the cables and wires that allowed for that?

Next time you board a plane to travel halfway across the globe for your holidays, think about the thousands of people, knowledge, tech and infrastructure, from the past and the present, that allows you to do that, cheaply and safely. While we may complain (and should complain, because this post isn’t about giving people a break) when the water companies burst a pipe and we have no running water for half a day, or the council are doing yet more repairs to the roads and we’re stuck in traffic for an hour, its also worth remembering quite how lucky we are to have such well developed infrastructure in our lives at all.

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Warning! Why Trying To Make A Living From Doing What You Love May Be Bad For Your Health

by James on August 12, 2010

http://www.flickr.com/photos/breatheindigital/4769100145/

Oh my goodness, not a very positive, motivational title to this post is it? It’s a good job I’m not here to kiss ass then! I hope you’ll bear with me on this and read on. The inspiration for this cheerful post came from a story in a book called Drive by Daniel H. Pink (if you’ve read it let me know what you thought of it) that I recently came across/read in the book shop, tut, tut. I’ve summarized this story below:

Encyclopedia wars

In the 90′s Microsoft created Encarta, an expansive encyclopedia of knowledge that you could buy on CD, DVD and later online via subscription. It was full of pictures, maps, audio files and all sorts of other goodies. Much of the content was written by professionals in their respective fields who were paid by Microsoft for their troubles. Plus there was an entire team behind the project, paid to make sure it was a success. I even remember being encouraged to use it extensively at my school.

Several years later, a new internet enterprise started up called Wikipedia. It was intended to be a free and open encyclopedia, with anybody able to contribute to it and edit it. Crucially however, nobody was paid for what they offered.

Returning to the present time, we know who came out on top in this duel of opposing approaches. Microsoft finally dropped Encarta last year and Wikipedia continues to go from strength to strength. But back in the 90′s would you have bet on Wikipedia to succeed? Would you have expected thousands of people, few of whom would have been professionals, would not have received a second glance by Microsoft, would not have got paid for their troubles, and would have got little if any praise for their efforts, to have contributed to Wikipedia with such enthusiasm?

That story, and the book as a whole, was about the broad issue of what motivates us, and it really resonated with my own experiences. To me I’ve found the contrast between doing something because it’s your job and doing something because it’s your hobby or passion to be a massive impassable chasm. The two don’t mix. They are like water and oil. As somebody recently tweeted, never shall the two meet. Yet, I’ve had everybody, from school teachers, people on the TV, job councilors, parents, colleagues, friends and fellow bloggers, all say the same thing – turn your passion into money.

Am I doing something wrong? Is my thinking all negative? Am I just a big scaredy-cat who can’t take a leap? The whole thing does after all, make perfect sense. Turn what interests you into a job and do what you love for a living. So obvious, so simple. Except…

My experiences

I used to do webdesign a lot. Looking back, I spent too much of my teenage years wasting time with the whole thing actually. It was exclusively my own stuff, my own sites and projects. I did a lot of PHP, and even created a crude WordPress type of blogging system long before I’d even heard of WordPress or contemplated using it. I even dabbled in Flash, learned a bit of Photoshop and several chunks of my university degree revolved around designing for the web. It seemed natural that I would move on and make a living from it. And that’s exactly what I did.

Can you guess what’s coming next?

The whole experience sucked. All the enjoyable aspects of designing websites for myself – learning new things, dabbling in wacky design ideas, taking the time to create the right color combinations, learning a new trick in PHP, making something that basically looked great, etc. – did not translate over when you were making sites for somebody else, with cost issues, time constraints and customer requirements all in play. I wasn’t doing what I wanted to do, I was doing what somebody else wanted, even though I was effectively working for myself.

I also had a friend who found herself in a similar situation. Her interest was in making her own jewellery. She enjoyed it and what she made was good, so good in fact that one of her friends asked her to make a tiara for her wedding. She spent months on it, fashioning something that was just right for the bride. On the wedding everybody raved about how good it looked. This got her thinking about where she could take her jewellery making hobby and sure enough she started her own little business. Suddenly she was no longer artfully crafting beautiful custom rings and necklaces at her own comfortable place, she was stretched by time and budget constraints, and was spending much of the day merely doing the maintenance aspects of running a business, chasing orders, etc.

There is always a “but”…

“But James, I know lots of people who’ve made it work. My friend is doing what he loves, my old boss quit to pursue his own thing. And just look at all those lifestyle designers with their blogs. I’m going to follow their examples and follow my dreams!”

Of course it can work out for people. Sometimes personal interests and business interests fit amicably together to produce a job that you love. Sometimes people are just lucky, but more often than not they work their ass off to achieve it. There are plenty of cases out there. Heck, my father did it with huge success. But you only have to spend an hour with him to know that he enjoys the idea of running his own business and of being self-employed, arguably as much as he enjoys the interests and passions that are intrinsically entwined with it.

It’s a beautiful idea making a living from what you love, but in reality, pursuing your passions doesn’t mean the money will automatically follow. There is too much hype blinding people to the reality. At the beginning it will be 90% about business and 10% about your passions, and starting a business has never been easy, regardless of what you’re selling or promoting. In fact, many of the well known internet faces who famously make a living online, still had/have day jobs. You have to make sacrifices, you have to accept you won’t make much money to start with, and you have to deal with a lot of headaches in the short-term. Most importantly though, you have to have a clue about how a business works.

If the idea of chasing up customers, tracking your income and expenses, managing staff, etc. makes you cold inside, think carefully before taking the plunge. Contrary to convention, there is nothing wrong with being the employee rather than the employer. I can go home in the afternoon, leave work behind and spend all evening doing the things I most enjoy. Somebody else can worry about budgets and marketing. It’s not glamorous or exotic but what’s actually wrong with that?

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Newspapers And The Forgotten Art Of Being Informed

by James on July 22, 2010

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dcmetroblogger/3816660227/

I apologize in advance for what may come across as a bit of a rant, but when I started this new blog my intention was to be more opinionated and personal, and this is one of those opportunities to get on my soapbox. Over the last few years I’ve gained what I would politely describe as a distrust of newspapers, a view increasingly shared by others. This is not to say I ever held the likes of  The Sun, the News Of The World or the Daily Telegraph as tombs of gospel truths, but nowadays I cringe at some of the stuff that is written.

One recent survey put newspapers as less trusted than banks, yet it’s commonly accepted that a free and easily available press is at the root of any democratic society. In many ways this is alarming. Does freedom of the press excuse the biased, and often factually wrong nonsense I read on their pages everyday, all the way from current events on the front page to the football on the back?

When I talk of bias I refer to the red lensed viewpoint of the Labour supporting, ‘working class’ directed Daily Mirror and the Conservative ‘middle class’ leaning, moral voice of the Daily Mail. Then of course there is the Murdoch owned The Sun, which conveniently flips its support between whoever is most likely to win an election. Not to mention countless others.

During the recent UK general election, depending on which paper you read, you’d get an entirely different and contradictory set of figures and stats on each party’s policies and popularity, to the point where the contrast was comical. Gordan Brown was either heralded as a literal hero of society or blasted as the worst Prime Minister in history (in any country and on any planet) depending on what you were reading. None of this was based on an impartial analysis of what he’d achieved (or not achieved), but rather on blind tribal loyalties. Where was the impartiality?

Of course, me bashing newspapers blindly would be somewhat hypocritical, and as biased as a Daily Mail article on the latest Grand Theft Auto release. I get that they need to sell copies everyday, I get that they need to increase their readership and keep that all important advertising revenue rolling in so that they can, well, survive. For better or for worse, you have to find a market and pitch your writing towards it to succeed.

Look at the aptly named The Independent, which markets itself as free from political bias and generally speaking seems to display the most balanced debate, which I would argue is what newspapers should be about. That has one of the lowest readerships of all the mainstream papers (admittedly a price that is five times more than the lowest priced daily publication probably doesn’t help). But even then, it still felt it was necessary to announce who it would be supporting at the recent general election (Liberal Democrats), and went so far as to encourage tactical voting in order to keep the Conservatives out. Surely this is a conflict of interest?

None of these papers are exempt from dramatization and sensationalism for the sake of selling a few extra copies and to get more attention. As a result it has got to the point where nobody wants to read mundane things like politics, economics and science when eating their cereal in a morning. Nowadays it’s the unusual, the bizarre that sells. Entertaining certainly, but when you’re reading that on a daily basis as your main source of information, it’s very easy to start wondering why your life doesn’t compare to the drama and madness of the lives reported in these papers.

The problem is over ten million people read newspapers everyday in the UK. Though the internet continues to chip into circulation levels, for most people it’s still their primary source of information, so it can all too easily entrench dodgy views and ideas if the stories aren’t accurate. You still think Princess Diana’s death was a conspiracy? Well, the Daily Express will give you all you want to read to confirm those beliefs. Hate the EU? Using the Apple cliche, there’s a newspaper for that.

I don’t want a yes-man who tells me what I want to hear and agrees with every belief I have, no matter how flawed it is, and I don’t want a newspaper to do the same for me either.

But perhaps it’s not all bad. Rather than relying on traditional media for their information, people are increasingly looking elsewhere, and crucially they are looking at a whole swathe of sources rather than just one newspaper each morning. Perhaps the art of being informed was never forgotten after all, it just found a new home on the internet.

Over to you. What sources do you use to stay informed and up to date? What sites do you visit for opinion and debate?

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Small Steps Taken Regularly Will Always Get You Far (Or, How To Write A Book The Part-Time Wage Slave Way)

by James on June 30, 2010

http://www.flickr.com/photos/billerr/1814657036/

Though it’s probably not quite what you might expect given what I cover on my blogs, I’m currently writing a book, a good ol’ sci-fi epic to be exact. The thing is, I’ve had the plot idea for years, ever since school, when I was asked to write a 1000 word piece as part of some generic homework. It was meant to be a do-just-enough-to-pass project, but I happened across a fledgling plot in those 1000 words that I really liked. In my mind at least, it eventually grew into a full story.

And in my head is where it stayed for nearly a decade. I’d occasionally try and commit it to paper but my efforts never lasted, I had neither the patience or the confidence in my abilities. I had this idea that you had to sit down and plough through a dozen pages regularly in order to write a book. Anything else seemed lazy or didn’t convey the appropriate amount of effort for such a grand project. My rationale was that if I was going to do this I’d have to do it properly and put in that magical hard work, whatever that involved.

Except I couldn’t ever find a block of several hours daily to write, and even if I could, I sincerely doubted my ability to stay focused and motivated for that length of time. It just wasn’t that appealing. If it mattered that much to me, surely I’d be able to put in all that time and effort, surely I’d be able to sit there so enthused by what I was writing I’d lose track of time?

I’m not going to describe the ways in which this was a bad way of doing things, there are enough productivians who can do that for me. Suffice it to say, I finally realized if I was going to do this I’d have to find a way of regularly writing that worked for me personally, and ditch all these perceptions about hard work that others had created.

What is “hard work” anyway? Some say it’s work that is challenging, that stretches you, that puts a sweat on your brow. Yet, why do people brag about the hard day’s work they’ve done, only to fall asleep right after their dinner, miss out on their kids and their hobbies and wake up the next day only to repeat the whole tiring process all over again? You can spend hours on something and still get nowhere. Perhaps a better description is of a project that you put your heart and soul into. But still, who says that has to be measured in hours committed or the number of beads of sweat on your brow?

So, after much trial and error, for the last five months I’ve stuck to a schedule of 1000 words a day, Monday to Friday (with the occasional holiday and break thrown in). Some people may balk at this puny 1000 words, after all if a typical book averages 100,000 words it is a mere drop in the ocean. That’s how I felt at first. But five months later I’ve done 85,000 words and counting! There is still a lot to do, a lot of polishing (this is after all my first attempt at a book) but it turns out taking small regular steps really does get you far.

I’ve avoided mentioning this until now because my approach still felt a bit like a cop-out, the old attitudes still clung on. I envisioned telling people about it and having to justify my efforts, when they’d invariably ask how I could get anywhere writing so little. But I recently read a great post by the Friendly Anarchist Fabian Kruse who described how the American author, Norman Mailer, would do as little as 750 words three times a week, and John Grisham, who wrote his first novel an hour a day for three years. It puts the whole National Novel Writing Project in an entirely different light. I suggest you check out 750words.com if you want something different (as a guide, this post is just over 750 words).

1000 words was a nice number for me, because it feels substantial enough to leave me feeling satisfied each day, but also leaves me with an hunger to pick up my laptop and continue with it the next day. It’s by no means set in stone of course; if I happen to be on a roll, I’ll run with it and do even more words. The point is, whether it be 1000 words of 100 words (or whether it be another hobby entirely), if you do it consistently, you’ll look back on your progress in three months time and be surprised at quite how far you’ve come.

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The Loss Aversion Instinct And How It Affects Your Judgment

by James on May 30, 2010

We humans have many traits that served us well in the Stone Age but can cause us a whole load of headaches in the modern world where things are rarely black and white. One of those traits is an unbalanced aversion to loss. In other words, we are more fearful of losing than we are hopeful of gaining. What does that mean? Well, when resources were scarce and the chances of being able to hunt and find a meal or get a drink from a waterhole were so rare, losing out could mean the difference between life and death. This instinct genuinely served a purpose. If you misplaced your spear you couldn’t just nip down to the shops to buy a new one.

However, nowadays our lives are so full of what ultimately boils down to superfluous nonsense and it’s taken for granted that our basic needs will be met. However, the caveman survival instinct is still with us so as a result the aversion to loss can manifest itself in things as simple as whether to buy tomato soup or vegetable soup at the shops, whether to watch House or True Blood on the TV, or whether to buy an XBox or PS3.

We have so much choice, the vast majority of which isn’t life threatening, that deciding what to do and have shouldn’t be a trial. But we still find ourselves overwhelmed whenever choices are put in front of us because it’s our very nature to focus so much on what we’d be missing rather than on what we’d be gaining. Imagine how better our judgments could be if we got to grips on our aversion to loss?

Are you a gambler?

To emphasize the point here is a common gambling example that demonstrates loss aversion, which you may have heard of before. Imagine you’re flipping a coin and you have to call out heads of tails. Get it wrong and you lose 100 pounds. But if you get it right? Well on average, it turns out you’d have to offer way more than 100 pounds to entice people to take the bet – double in fact. It would take the prospect of gaining 200 pounds for a person to risk losing 100 pounds. People can more easily imagine being without the money than with it.

Close the door behind you

If gambling wasn’t enough, I’m now going to talk about doors. Boring and mundane I know, but there is logic to the madness – when we talk about choices and opportunities in life, we often use the analogy of doors opening and closing. By default we tend to assume that if we walk through one door (we make a particular choice) the others are closed on us (we lose out on the choices we didn’t take). So, we end up dithering outside in the cold, and by the time we make a decision we invariably focus on what’s been missed behind us rather than what’s lies in front of us.

Such is our fear of making the wrong call, even on the most mundane of matters, people nowadays seem to spend much of their time on the outside, staring at all their options rather than actually committing to any of them. The irony of this however, is that we live in a very open society that says anything is possible. Why do we still fear letting opportunities pass as though they will never come round again? Why do we assume those doors of opportunity are locked behind us as soon as we walk through them? Is making the wrong call or changing your mind really always a life-or-death situation?

A few examples

Here’s a few examples of how this mentality can cause a whole load of problems in your life. Maybe some of them will sound eerily familiar. Hopefully it will draw attention  to them and give you pause for thought. How much is your fear of loss blinding your judgment?

Relationships and friends. “I don’t want to commit to my girlfriend in case I burn bridges with this other girl. If things don’t work out at least I’ll still have someone I like.” Just one example of why keeping all your options open can be a bad thing in relationships. In fact because of the emotional turmoil relationships tend to bring with them, particularly when they end, it’s perhaps understandable people shy away from commitment. With society’s obsession with the perfect partner, true love and soulmates, it’s no wonder we try and keep all our options open.

It also works the other way. How many people are sticking around in broken, dying relationships, because they focus too much on the prospect of being without anybody, rather than on the positive aspects of being free and single?

Work and career. How many people out there are in jobs they hate or are on career paths they have no enthusiasm for? By staying where you, you actually keep your options open, rationalizing that it’s better to be in work, to have a job and a decent wage. Afterall, once you’ve quit you can’t go back… or can you? And if you can’t, what about the thousands of other jobs in your field? What about the opportunities to start up your own business?

Education. There is an horrible inclination in our society that by the time you’re sixteen you have a rough idea of what you want to do in your life. This influences the choice of GCSE’s you take, which is then further focused during the A Level years until you’re studying something specific and durable at university that will set you up for your chosen career for the next forty years. But… what if you get it wrong? What if midway through university you decide you hate computer science and should have studied history instead?

Contrary to what your careers teacher tells you, these aren’t life or death decisions. Yes, if you make the right choice it can set you up in life, but even that’s not guaranteed, and it’s a rare person that is so sure of what they want. It can take years for people to figure out what they want to do in life. So if you’re mulling over whether to do chemistry or art, thinking both appeal to you in their own different ways, it’s not necessarily an either-or choice.

And lastly…

Possessions. Followers of my old blog will know all about my focus on clutter. The reasons we cling onto old photos and books and other junk in the attic is largely because of our loss aversion. We are more worried about the (really slim) consequences of no longer having something, rather than on the more obvious benefits of having clutter-free space and freedom. But why? If you do make the commitment to throw something out, it doesn’t mean that’s it. You can buy it again if needs be, or even just borrow it.

I’m currently making the long-overdue transition from buying CD albums to downloading my music, and loss aversion is making me want to stick with the old media. Downloading music just isn’t the same, it’s a different experience, blah, blah, blah. Loss aversion makes me ignore the fact I’ve not listened to 99% of my albums in years, it makes me lose sight of the benefits of having all my music in one place on my iPod.

Don’t hang around out in the cold waiting for divine intervention, the right circumstances or until everything feels right. Choose which door you want to walk through and don’t carry regrets – nobody can lock it behind you.

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